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The Society for American Soccer History (SASH) is pleased to announce the release of five clips of historical color footage from the 1950s. Featuring German American League play, the footage was filmed at legendary New York Metro Area soccer venues Metropolitan Oval, Eintracht Oval, and Zerega Oval.
The footage consists of home movies featuring National Soccer Hall of Famer George Brown, some of which was filmed by his father, National Soccer Hall of Famer James Brown.
Four of the clips were filmed between 1953 and 1955 and feature George Brown with New York German Hungarians. The fifth clip, filmed between 1956 and 1957, features Brown with Elizabeth Polish Falcons.
Now available courtesy of George and Peggy Brown, the footage offers a rare in-color look at the game in the 1950s. The clips will be published this week on the SASH YouTube channel beginning on Monday, July 7 with a new clip published each day at noon ET.
This previously unreleased footage is part of the Society’s ongoing efforts to enrich the visual history of soccer in America.
In June, SASH released what is presently the earliest footage of soccer played in the US. That footage shows a friendly match in 1921 between San Francisco’s Italia Virtus against a team from the Italian Navy cruiser RM Libia, then in port as part of a worldwide cruise. The footage, licensed from Cineteca di Bologna, comes from the first publicly released film directed by legendary American filmmaker Frank Capra.
Later in June, SASH released six clips of international club friendlies and indoor matches played in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. The clips were identified in the Universal Newsreel Collection at the National Archive and digitized for SASH by Colorlab in Maryland. Along with the Universal Newsreel footage, SASH released five additional international club friendly match clips from the same period courtesy of George and Peggy Brown. The footage was filmed at Yankees Stadium, Ebetts Field, and Randalls Island. The two indoor clips, filmed at Madison Square Garden in 1941, are currently the earliest known footage of indoor soccer in the US. One further clip from the first International Soccer League final, played at the Polo Grounds in 1960, was also released.
In 2020, SASH released footage identified in the archives of the Swedish Film Institute. That footage included the first US Men’s National Team match, played at the start of the team’s 1916 Scandinavian tour, and two clips from Bethlehem Steel FC’s 1919 Scandinavian tour, the first visit by a US professional club team to Europe (clip one, clip two). SASH also released a compilation of footage of US troops playing soccer in France and Germany from 1918 and 1919 following the end of the First World War. All of the footage can be viewed on the SASH YouTube channel.
SASH has also collected links to nearly sixty newsreel clips in US and European commercial film archives related to soccer in the US between 1924 and 1984. Those links are organized by archive under the Video tab of the main menu on the SASH website homepage.
Editor's Note: I am a member of SASH and know George Brown, part of the only father-son duo in the National Soccer Hal of Fame which he had headed.
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